Committee of Voters journalist refused accreditation for Party of the Regions conference

Dementiy Bily, member of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine [CVU] and Editor of the Kherson CVU newspaper Vilny Vybir [Free Choice] was on 13 July refused accreditation to cover the Kherson regional Party of the Regions conference.

The deputy head of the regional branch told Dementiy Bily that the number of places was restricted and advised him to watch the conference online on the Party of the Regions website.

Before receiving this response, he’s spent an hour on the phone trying to find out how to get accreditation and being sent from one place to another. The saga was long, but it is of relevance that the same deputy head confirmed that she was the person to turn to for accreditation, but, having found out that Bily was from CVU, said she needed to ask the head of the branch (and the Governor of the Kherson region)  Mykola Kostyak..

He then received the refusal.

CVU points out that Article 13 § 4 of the Law on the Parliamentary Elections guarantees media representatives “unobstructed access to all public events linked with the elections”.

The Press Secretary to Kostyak has now apologized, claiming that he did not know about the refusal to grant the CVU accreditation, and promising to look into it on Monday.  This will be two days after the conference which CVU was refused access to.

From the report on the CVU site